Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Elizarraras.
Melanie, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I come from a low income hispanic family and grew up in City Heights basically all my life. Being raised by traditional hispanic parents, we were taught to go to school, go to college, get a 9-5 job and be able to provide for a family. Now, me being me, I wasn’t really about that. I was miserable going to college and trying really hard to follow this path that was planned out for me. So, I quit college and started tattooing and painting. Honestly, the best decision I’ve made for myself. This is a privilege I’m living. I am forever grateful I get to do what I’m doing. How this started is.
While I was in Elementary going onto Middle School, I would always watch my sister, Laura, paint and do art projects for her class. I was super interested and in awe that she had created those projects on her own. I thought her drawings were pretty good, but I wanted to be better. I was already comfortable with the drawing being that I would always fill up a page in my journal with mandala designs. I just wanted to start using another medium, my sister was using acrylic paint so that’s what I started using too. I would sneak and take her little bottles of acrylic paint and just start painting a picture I found on google to try and match it perfectly. They didn’t really come out perfectly, obviously, but I loved painting and I loved acrylic paint ever since that moment. I started creating more and more to keep practicing, I was staying up ’til 2-3 am just painting. I couldn’t stop for anything, even to go eat. I just had to finish my painting first. Everything about it is time-consuming yet so relaxing to me. Now I never really wanted to take any art classes at school or anything like that. The painting was really just a small hobby for me I could do at home. That’s how I kept it for years. I just did it for myself. Later on, my friends and family saw that I was actually pretty good and so they would want some art by me or my mom would have me do little art projects around the house, like painting some pots or a bench in the yard and even the fence with plants, flowers, etc. It made me feel really good that people liked my stuff and they kept telling me to put it out there. I just recently put some of my paintings up in little galleries like La Cafeína in City Heights and a studio called sdvisualcreations in Barrio Logan. I would love to keep showcasing my art at more galleries and hopefully have people buy some of them. That’s my goal for now.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
All in all, it has been a pretty smooth road for me just because I do it as a little hobby and I don’t really know if I want to make a similar career out of it or how I would even do that. But there have been times when I stopped painting because I just had no motivation to create anything. There were a lot of times where I would also just doubt myself and think that maybe, Ya knows, I’m really not that good and that it wouldn’t lead anywhere. But here I am, writing an article about my art for a magazine. To me, this is pretty big. I feel like I’m accomplishing a little something here.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m just a 19-year-old who loves to sit in her room and paint all day. I use a lot of vibrant colors in my paintings. The abstract is what interests me. I love painting odd faces and cartoony-looking portraits. It’s different and unique to look at too. I’m most proud of being able to get my paintings out there for people to check them out. That’s really all I want, is for people to see my art and appreciate it.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Honestly, I learned that you just need to do things for yourself. Enjoy what you enjoy doing.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melanielizarraras/
